Florida anglers frustrated by federal limits on red snapper

WASHINGTON — Red snapper are becoming far more plentiful off the shores of Florida, but if you catch this delicious fish during most of the year, you'll have to throw it back.

Next month's short season for hauling in red snapper won't make frustrated anglers much happier.

Both of Florida's U.S. senators, backed by Florida fishermen, are demanding reassessments of federal limits on recreational fishing of the consumer favorite, which is rebounding from decades of overfishing.

Federal officials announced this week that the South Atlantic season for red snapper, from Florida to the Carolinas, will be limited to three weekends next month, starting July 11. Red-snapper season in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico was limited to a nine-day period that started Sunday and will end Monday.

For Florida, often promoted as "The Fishing Capital of the World," limits of this kind mean lost business for a big industry of charter operators and fishing suppliers.

"If you are lucky enough to catch one, most times you have to let it go," grumbled Paul Roydhouse, owner of Fishing Headquarters, which takes customers out on charter boats from Fort Lauderdale. "If they can't even take one home for dinner, it really hurts their feelings. It gives them a bad taste in their mouth for fishing."

As a result of this and other pressures during the economic downturn, the recreational fishing industry along the South Atlantic coast has lost tens of thousands of jobs in recent years, said John Barber of the Central Florida Offshore Anglers, a fishing group based in Orlando.

"If people can't keep the fish, they just don't charter," he said. "A lot of people have sold their boats. You've got boat manufacturers, bait stores, charter captains affected. It has a ripple effect."

Fish experts defend the limits, saying that red snapper needs more time to recover after it was nearly fished out by the end of the last decade. A total ban was imposed in the South Atlantic in 2010 and 2011, so short fishing seasons since then reflect red snapper's recovery from depletion.

"This is a fish that can live for up to 50 years. It doesn't reach reproductive status until 10 or 15 years old. To rebuild this population takes some time," said Holly Binns, Southeast director of oceans policy for the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent research group.

"Fishermen are seeing far more red snapper in the water than they ever used to. So the tendency is to want to open the floodgates and go back to the kind of fishing seasons we used to have.

"But if you start hammering this population again, it will go back to being heavily depleted, and that's not good for the fish or the fishermen."

Many anglers, along with U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson of Florida, say federal fishery officials are making decisions based on outdated and inaccurate information that fails to track where fish now congregate. They are pressing officials to re-evaluate, and Nelson has pushed legislation through Congress to provide more resources for counting fish populations.

"They may be making assessments on 6-year-old data," Nelson said this week. "Look, this is a big business in Florida, for recreational fishing and boat-captain fishing."

The National Marine Fisheries Service plans to begin a full assessment of red snapper populations in August to update estimates made in 2010.

"We have made efforts to improve our data collection and update that information," said Andy Strelcheck, a fisheries biologist at the service in St. Petersburg. "In addition, we've conducted independent surveys through research cruises to help evaluate populations."

Restaurants and fish markets also have had to adjust to short supplies of red snapper, mostly because of quotas limiting commercial hauls of the popular fish.

"Give the fish a year off, and give it time to come back," suggested Larry Siemsen, co-owner of Old Dixie Seafood, a market in Boca Raton. "You do it now, or you don't have anything later."

Siemsen hardly ever sells red snapper, though many customers ask for it. He offers them yellowtail snapper, a more abundant fish, instead. Some restaurants are making the same substitution.

"Red snapper is very expensive, and it is hard to get," said Paul DeCant, chef and manager of Snappers Seafood in Boynton Beach. "It's a good-eating fish, to be sure. It doesn't hurt to get it in. But customers are pretty happy with the yellowtail."

Some restaurants and their customers are taking a socially conscious view of the need to preserve depleted fish.

"Without management, we know what can happen because we've seen it with other species, particularly the swordfish, which became nearly extinct," said Norman Van Aken, chef of Norman's restaurant in Orlando. "It makes us creative and resourceful to take care of our guests. By and large, because of things like global warming in the news, once you explain that there is such a thing as protecting species, they don't mind."